


Love Potions and the Unfortunate Implications: An Apologetic Essay by Macy Thropp

by DroughtofApathy



Series: A Thousand Lifetimes [29]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Actually acknowledging the consequences of love potions, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Aphrodisiacs, F/F, Hyperarousal, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Sort Of, the TA is in her thirties so it's not as problematic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 09:02:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17701418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DroughtofApathy/pseuds/DroughtofApathy
Summary: There were many reasons Naomi Blackburn had made the conscious decision to pursue a career in educating college students rather than children – higher salaries and slightly more prestige among the top of the list on any other given day. But in that moment, as an errant potion vial went flying across the room and shattered against the side of the front table, Naomi questioned her entire life’s decisions.





	Love Potions and the Unfortunate Implications: An Apologetic Essay by Macy Thropp

There were many reasons Naomi Blackburn had made the conscious decision to pursue a career in educating college students rather than children – higher salaries and slightly more prestige among the top of the list on any other given day. But in that moment, as an errant potion vial went flying across the room and shattered against the side of the front table, Naomi questioned her entire life’s decisions.

She’d decided to teach adults specifically to avoid these disastrous situations. Though admittedly she didn’t know of any school that taught potions at such an advanced level that children could have sneakily brewed an aphrodisiac successfully…

No, all Naomi knew was that as soon as she figured out an antidote, she was going to find whoever had decided it would be a splendid idea to fling a highly dangerous and volatile mixture across a classroom and she was going to slowly skin them alive.

“Everyone out,” she snapped, her voice dangerously low. “Now!” Immediately two dozen terrified students fled through the doors. Small consolation indeed. She clutched the edge of the table and knew if she loosened her grip even a little, her legs would give out in an instant.

But Naomi’s own rising lust seemed the least of her worries considering who had been in the ‘blast radius’ so to speak.

A few feet away, her TA sat stiffly in a chair, looking more out of focus than Naomi had ever seen her. It was small consolidation that Zita Afshar wasn’t some undergraduate looking for experiential credits, but rather a Ph.D. candidate in her early thirties. Still, a good fifteen or twenty years younger than Naomi herself, but old enough that she considered the TA a fully-fledged adult. Gods knew if one of the students had been caught in the blast it would have meant trouble. More trouble.  

Luckily, Zita had avoided the majority of the small explosion, and managed to pull herself together enough to spell the remainder of the potion back into the newly fixed vial. And, as Naomi watched through heavily lidded eyes, she poured it into the tester in the hopes that it would identify which recipe they’d used.

“Well?” Naomi asked, slowly and shakily moving closer. Zita exhaled heavily, waving vaguely at the screen. Naomi had to blink several times to focus, and once she did she wished she hadn’t.

Oh, that settled it. The moment she figured out which student had decided it would be a good idea to mix their own self-created, untested, unregulated, _lust_ potion, she was going to give the entire class a history lesson on the Salem witch trials. A practical lesson.

Self-created meant no antidote would be safe to take lest one of the ingredients had a particularly fatal reaction. No antidote meant the unthinkable.

“We-” Zita squeezed her eyes shut, dragging the remnants of her composure together. “Right. Okay. Next class I am going to rip the head off of whoever did this, but right now we need to not be in a public lab room.”

Naomi struggled to focus on what Zita was saying, and not how enticing the other woman’s full red lips looked as they moved. But she just looked so damn attractive. Slightly flushed brown skin, barely restrained fury in her pretty brown eyes. Shit.

Zita was looking at her, partially in concern, and partially in barely concealed lust. Their eyes met, and both women quickly tore their gazes away.

“I- yes, you’re right,” Naomi said, and dear gods, was her voice even deeper than it usually was? Oh, hell. “Are you- can you make it back to your apartment safely?” Zita nodded, already gathering her things.

An educator at heart, Naomi warned her not to stay in public for longer than absolutely necessary, and just in case, to lock her doors. Without knowing the full effects of that damnable potion, just being around other people might be dangerous.

“You too, professor,” Zita said, and Naomi saw her forcibly tear her gaze away from Naomi’s nylon-clad legs.

It definitely did not help matters that Naomi knew exactly what Zita would be doing later as she watched the other woman’s retreating form hurry through the door. Well, whatever techniques Zita used to relieve the horrible ache between her legs, Naomi wouldn’t dwell on it.

It would have been easy to return home – if she could call the school-provided quarters home – and take care of things the old-fashioned way. Perhaps it would even be enjoyable. Definitely, in fact. After all, it had been some time since Naomi got herself comfortable and rubbed a few out, and her vibrator was probably collecting metaphorical dust.

But Naomi was too proud for that. Too stubborn and too inclined to see this as an educational experience rather than a chance to fuck herself silly.

She was too wound up to transport herself back home, so the professor reluctantly boarded one of the shuttles that went all around campus, incensed that her rooms were so far away. Very nearly the farthest stop, really.

Despite the clear and present distraction going on between her legs, Naomi acutely felt the whispers and stares of the students on the shuttle. No doubt word had spread through the entire campus like wildfire that Professor Blackburn and her TA got doused with some mystery potion. She only prayed the specifics of exactly what the effects were had been kept mum by the idiot who’d made it. If only for fear of retribution from the enraged professor herself. Not to mention Zita’s fury.

Instinctively, she crossed her arms over her small breasts. Her nipples ached and she knew they had to be rock hard and easily poking through her thin bra and silk shirt.

Twisting her curly red hair off the nape of her profusely sweating neck, Naomi headed straight to her rather impressive bookshelves the second she got home. There had to be some sort of cure. Some way to flush this horrible torture out of her system as painlessly and quickly as possible.

Four books later – two about potion antidotes, one specifically about aphrodisiacs (Naomi explicitly refused to call them love potions), and the last about the consequences of leaving the potion drinker untreated. As a tribute to the strength of the potion, reading about the odds of losing her mind to insatiable lust barely quelled her arousal at all.

She refused to succumb to the effects just yet, and didn’t even allow herself to toe off her tight heels and change into something more comfortable than her blazer and skirt. The less comfortable she was, the less likely she’d be tempted to slip a hand down her panties.

A cold shower sounded absolutely divine, but the thought of being naked, of having those lovely drops of water rolling over her sensitive skin seemed far too dangerous. She shuddered, squirming in her uncomfortable hard-back chair.

Imagining ways she could dish out some harsh retribution to the persons responsible distracted the professor long enough to pull together some semblance of a meal. Uncomfortably conscious of the sheer amount of water she was probably losing to the flood in her underwear, she also made sure to hydrate accordingly.

Hours later, Naomi angrily paced her room in frustration. She’d had to change her panties three times. The first time she’d simply tossed the sodden fabric in the trash, deeming them ruined beyond repair. The second time she’d been a bit smarter and tucked a tissue inside to soak up the moisture and protect the thin gusset. That had only lasted so long, and she was nearing her breaking point.

“I’m going to kill them,” Naomi muttered, feeling dizzy. Unable to hold off the inevitable, she nearly tripped over her long legs as she stumbled into her bedroom, flinging her clothes aside in her haste.

At last, blissfully naked, she shoved a hand between her legs, moaning at the absolute flood she felt. Naomi didn’t waste time plunging her fingers inside. She needed instant relief, not slow torture. But no sooner had she came with a sharp cry did the brief and blissful relief give way to an even worse sort of frustration.

“No, no, no,” she whimpered, frantically chasing yet another orgasm just seconds after the last. This time, her body sagging in relief, she managed to relax for at least five minutes before she felt her arousal creeping up again.

Naomi fucked herself well into the night, switching to her vibrator when her hands and fingers cramped up, and then back to her hand when her clit started to hurt from too much buzzing. And still it just grew worse and worse with each shaking orgasm.

Finally, angry and nowhere near satisfaction, Naomi curled up and just cried. She felt disgusting: all sweaty and needy. But she couldn’t bring herself to move any more than a few inches. And still she longed to cum again. God, a light breeze across her raw and swollen genitals could have sent her to the moon at this point.

She jammed a pillow between her thighs and achingly rolled onto her stomach to better grind against it. Eventually, Naomi just passed out from sheer exhaustion. When she came to, just as exhausted and horny as she’d been before, Naomi clumsily rolled off the bed to distance herself from the soaked bedspread. A disgusting mix of sweat and arousal, the dark wet spot stared mockingly back at her.

By some miracle, Naomi had no classes to tend to on Wednesdays so no one missed her when she decided it would be best for her to remain shut up in her rooms, actively doing anything to avoid touching herself.

Whoever had made that horrible potion hadn’t just been clever, she decided in a fit of despair. They’d been downright sadistic to make something that made a person so horny they couldn’t do anything else but touch themselves only for masturbation to increase the problem tenfold.

Worst of all, in her lust-addled haze, Naomi couldn’t control her wild and deeply enticing fantasies from staring a certain brown-skinned TA of hers. Surely her mind had to be conjuring these filthy images under the effects of the potion. They’d both been doused, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

She tried not to think of the fact that it would mean Zita had been plagued by lewd fantasies of _her_ for the past day or so. Oh, gods. Zita. She’d almost forgotten the other woman was suffering the same fate as she was. Naomi wasn’t sure she’d wish this on her worst enemy, let alone her colleague.

At one point, half-crazed, Naomi considered calling up someone to help her work off the effects. But she only had a few people she’d have considered having sex with, none of whom will under the influence of some student’s homemade aphrodisiac. Certainly Allegra Lucas wouldn’t bat an eye at Naomi’s strange predicament, but she’d be a little too amused for Naomi’s pride. In the end she didn’t call anyone.

Wandering around in her lightest clothing possible – and having resorted to using a menstrual pad to absorb the liquid practically dripping out of her vagina – Naomi kept flitting back and forth between wanting nothing more than to bring back taring and feathering to whoever subjected her to this and promising whatever deity was listening that she’d give them just about anything to make it stop.

The potion made her magic unstable, though thankfully mostly harmless. A few objects went sailing across the room out of frustration every now and then, and she’d nearly flooded her bathtub after a particularly desperate session with her detachable showerhead.

Inadvertently, with Zita almost constantly on her mind, Naomi mirrored the other woman. Blessedly they were both dressed enough not to be too mortified when they locked surprised eyes through the glass.

“It’s good that you called, actually,” Zita said, and Naomi heard the strain in her voice. “Look, I’ve been searching every damned book about aphrodisiacs I can find, and there’s nothing. Not a shred of a solution in any of these godforsaken pages, and I assume you haven’t had any success either.” Naomi shook her head, though she didn’t tell Zita that she’d given up four books in and had spent the rest of her time with a hand on her pussy.

“Is there any hope, logically, that it’ll just leave our system eventually?” Naomi cringed at the desperation in her tone.  She cringed even harder when she caught herself staring at Zita’s small breasts, nipples clearly defined through her thin tank top. The younger woman deserved better than some old professor leering at her in some potion-induced fit of madness.

“I don’t know,” Zita answered, and Naomi didn’t like her normally-confident TA sounding so helpless. Even despite their noticeable height difference – Naomi was one of the tallest female professors on campus and Zita decidedly the smallest – Naomi had never been more aware of how small she was than in that moment. Worse, Naomi wanted her. Wanted to lift her up and pin her against a door. Wanted to be held down and seduced by her. Wanted _her_.

Face flushed and clit throbbing, Naomi barely made it through another ten minutes of agonizingly arousing conversation before she abruptly mentioned she had to see about getting dinner started, and hung up before Zita could finish her assenting answer.

After the all-consuming lust didn’t fade the next day, Naomi was forced to cancel her classes without explanation. It was then she briefly considered a visit to the hospital. Briefly. The thought of being poked and prodded and tested – all while in a humiliating state of arousal – hardly seemed any more preferable than this. Besides, Naomi wasn’t too modest to say she was one of the most accomplished potions master of the age, and Zita the best and most thorough researchers she’d seen at the university in a long time. If they hadn’t been able to find a cure, what chance did overworked and underpaid doctors have?

It was around midday that Naomi, after her third freezing cold shower, and another session with her vibrator – she’s had to replace the batteries twice – that she got a mirror call from Zita. Tempted to ignore it, Naomi braced herself for another half hour of torment and forcing herself not to stare at any part of Zita’s enticing, lovely, firm…no. No.

“I’m coming over in fifteen minutes,” Zita said in lieu of a greeting. “Make sure you’re decent.” And before Naomi could respond, Zita hung up, leaving her to stare confusedly at her own reflection. She shook herself and reluctantly dressed in far more layers than her overheated and overaroused body wanted.

When she answered the knock on her door she came face to face with Zita who was tightly gripping the upper arm of Macy Thropp. And Naomi never would have suspected Macy of anything nefarious as that potion. She was a studious young woman and never spoke except to answer a question posed to her.

“Why don’t you tell Professor Blackburn exactly what you know, Macy?” Zita said in a dangerously calm voice. Macy looked terrified. “See, Macy here thought coming to me would be somehow less terrifying than coming to you, Professor. I can’t imagine why.”

Naomi couldn’t help but smirk slightly. She understood why Zita’s diminutive height and relatively quiet nature made people think she was somehow less strict than the louder professor. Few knew Zita actually did a majority of the grading, and it was she who returned their papers full of eviscerating comments.

“I’m sorry, professor,” Macy said, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to- I never meant-”

“Save it,” Naomi said tersely, snapping her fingers. “Just tell us exactly how we can reverse this loathsome potion of yours before I let Zita forcibly pour your own creation down your throat, strap your limbs down to a chair and leave you locked in a room for two and a half days.”

Macy swallowed thickly. She was physically trembling, but managed to pull herself together enough to open her mouth.

“It- it’s a love potion,” she said weakly. “Another student wanted- I mean- I wanted to- um, there’s no antidote exactly. Sorry. I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I was supposed to test the effects that afternoon, but there was an incident, obviously. But the good news is that it can be cured! Um, but it’s- you might not like it.” She cringed, looking between the two women fearfully.

“Well, I like being uncontrollably horny for the past forty-nine hours even less, I’ll bet, so you’d better start talking,” Naomi said, far beyond feeling embarrassed. She’d probably regret that outburst later, but she wanted nothing more than for Macy to get on with it and tell them what they had to do.

“The- the potion got you both,” Macy said, and she looked as white a sheet just saying it. “So…so you won’t be able to- to uh, you know, be satisfied unless you, er, do it.”

“’Do it?’” Zita repeated mockingly. “Are you twelve, you reckless idiot? You invented a rape potion that can only be cured if Naomi and I fuck each other? Have you lost your mind, you _idiot_? Aside from the serious ethical issues with that, the danger you have put all three of us in is astounding. You were prepared to test a senseless concoction on yourself without a planned failsafe, and your idiotic youthful invincibility complex-”

As arousing as it was to listen to Zita verbally eviscerate the person responsible for her misery, Naomi had other things on her mind.

“Macy,” she interrupted, holding a hand up to stop Zita before she could make the woman cry. “Get out of my rooms, and I swear, if even one student finds out about any of this I will make you wish you were never born.” Macy nodded and sprinted out the door faster than a speeding bullet, leaving Naomi and Zita to awkwardly stare at each other.

“Oh, my god, I don’t know if I can do this,” Naomi said. She rubbed at her eyes and sank heavily onto the couch. “There are explicit rules against sleeping with subordinates, and- and Macy knows exactly what we’re going to be doing.”

“I’m sorry,” Zita said, and she meant it. “I wish- obviously I never wanted this to happen like it did, but we don’t have any options. Please, I don’t think I can stand this any longer. Protocol states there will be no ramifications for us sleeping together given the circumstances. I’m not a student exactly, and I’m not reliant on you for anything but a recommendation which I’m sure I could get from somewhere else if need be. Now, please. Please, let me take you to bed. I promise I will make as painless as absolutely possible.”

Zita moved close, and looked about to literally get down on her knees and beg, but Naomi quickly caught her elbow. She nodded breathlessly, and pulled Zita into the bedroom. The sheets were an absolute mess, and though the stench of sweat and sex had dissipated some there was no secret to what Naomi had been doing in there.

They didn’t exchange words, too busy desperately making out against a hardwood door. Clothes flew across the room, only about half sent by frantic hands and the rest by wordless magic. Naomi’s knees hit the side of her bed, and she quickly scrambled onto the rumpled sheets, pulling Zita down on top of her.

She whimpered helplessly and tried to articulate exactly what she needed through the fog clouting her brain. But Zita just sucked on her breasts soothingly, and told her to just relax. That she’d make sure she was well taken care of.

When Zita, without wasting another moment, slipped down between her shaking thighs, Naomi nearly lost her mind.

“Please! Oh, dear gods, please!” She begged. She begged in a ragged, desperate, pleading voice. She could feel Zita’s blunt nails digging into the soft flesh of her thighs. She came with a high-pitched shriek, embarrassingly enough. But when Zita lifted her head, and the desperate arousal only receded minutely, Naomi started to panic. She needed more. She needed to be fucked until she couldn’t breathe, let alone think.

“More?” Zita asked, her voice low and seductive. Naomi nodded frantically, pulling at Zita’s long hair. She writhed and moaned, and soaked the sheets beneath her jerking pelvis right through.

When at last she lay sated and exhausted, Naomi struggled to catch her breath. Her body felt heavy, her eyelids even more so. But Zita was looking at her with shaking need. Face flushed, brow sweaty, she looked a sight. A beautiful sight.

“You don’t have to- I mean, if you’re not comfortable…” Zita tried to be gallant, but Naomi easily flipped the smaller woman onto her back and nudged her legs open. She teasingly flicked her tongue across Zita’s clit, and the response was almost instantaneous. Zita jerked upwards, inhaling sharply.

Naomi groaned in approval, savoring Zita’s taste. She felt every little tremor, heard every tiny gasp. Zita wasn’t loud like Naomi. Naomi didn’t expect the quiet TA to be. But she knew judging by the tight tension curling in Zita’s thighs and belly that she had to be close. Underneath her palm, spread wide across Zita’s tiny lower abdomen, she felt the muscles contract and tighten and in an instant, Zita came with a sharp gasp, throwing her head back into the pillows.

She made Zita cum twice more in quick succession until at last the grip on her hair loosened enough for her to sit up slightly. Gone was the desperate need to fuck, and Naomi felt the last of the residual foreign arousal recede, replaced by an entirely different and all too familiar need.

The two women stared at each other uncertainly. Naomi knew what should happen. She knew she should politely, but firmly see Zita to the door so they could take care of themselves and this new, natural, arousal in the privacy of their own beds.

“We- we should be certain it’s all gone,” Naomi instead heard herself say. She blushed, and looked away but to her surprise and relief, Zita nodded.

“Just in case,” Zita agreed. Which was all it took for Naomi to grab Zita’s hand and drag it down between her legs once more. They shuddered, unable to keep their hands off one another. Naomi’s last fleeting thought before Zita made sure she could only focus on the sensations between her thighs, was that she’d definitely have to request a TA transfer after all this blew over.

She didn’t expect for them to fall asleep together. But, when Naomi blinked awake in the middle of the night, at last coming out of the lust-induced haze, she felt a small body pressed up against her front.

Zita’s hair fanned out across the red pillows. They’d kicked the sheets down to the foot of the bed sometime during their…encounter. Gently, Naomi brushed a hand across Zita’s shoulder, startled to find it so cold. Though her own body felt hot and sticky still, she reluctantly dragged a sheet over them both, and went back to sleep. They’d have to talk about this in the morning.

They didn’t talk about it, of course. Instead, both women woke unable to meet the other’s eye. They sat as far as possible from each other, sheets tightly pressed to their chests. Naomi felt a sick dread pooling in her stomach, and she immediately offered the use of her bathroom for Zita to clean up if she wanted. Zita nodded gratefully and hurried through the door.

This left Naomi to awkwardly stand next to her bed, hiding her naked body with a sex-soaked sheet from an empty room. She’d slept with her TA. Under the influence of a powerful aphrodisiac, sure, but slept with her all the same. It didn’t help matters that the TA and her had been borderline flirting with each other for months now. It didn’t help matters that the fantasies rattling around in Naomi’s mind – though less frantic and desperate, sure – hadn’t stopped just because they’d fucked the potion’s effects away. It didn’t help that she now knew exactly what Zita looked like without her clothes on.

She heard the water turn off in the shower, and hurriedly cast several cleaning spells over both the bed and herself, and another to dress her before Zita could emerge.

The smaller woman emerged fully clothed, thank god. They still couldn’t quite meet each other’s eye.

“We need to have a discussion with Macy,” Zita said finally. “Do you want me to contact her now or…or would you rather we wait?”

“Might as well get things over with,” Naomi said, running a hand through her hair. She tried not to remember what it felt like to feel Zita’s fingers tangling in her curls. “Christ, okay. Fantastic. I’ve always wanted to discuss my student-induced insatiable lust before This is _exactly_ why I became a professor.”  Zita tiredly rubbed at her face and went out to make the call.

Fifteen stilled and uncomfortable minutes later, Macy was sat at Naomi’s kitchen table, just as terrified as the day before, if not more so.

“I’m so sorry,” Macy said again. “Look, it’ll never happen again, I swear.”

“Damn right it won’t,” Naomi said, glaring daggers. It was much more effective when she wasn’t out of her mind with lust. “Do you realize the true extent of what your little aphrodisiac has done? Of what its entire purpose is? Macy, you are playing with bottled rape.”

“Rape? No!” Macy insisted. “No, it’s not- that’s not true. Look, it’s just supposed to spice things up in the bedroom, yeah? Make things a little more pleasurable. It’s not rape!”

“You made a potion where the effects made myself and Professor Blackburn uncontrollably horny without any cure except to have sex with each other. Something neither of us wanted to do,” Zita said. “We had no choice, no other option, not way to do anything but fuck. What does that sound like to you?”

“No, you don’t understand,” Macy said in a panic. “I’d never- I wouldn’t make something like that without a failsafe. The potion would never force anyone to have sex with someone they didn’t want.”

“You’d be surprised how enticing anyone could look if you’re out of your mind and the only relief is their genitals,” Naomi snapped. Macy cringed, looking more than a little ill. “Tell me that isn’t non-consensual sexual contact.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Macy said, wringing her hands. “I- okay this is going to be really uncomfortable to hear.”

“More uncomfortable than two days of being assaulted by images of my superior bent over her desk as I rubbed my clitoris raw? I don’t think so,” Zita said without hesitation. Naomi flushed at that, and looked down at her hands.

“Do you have to describe it in detail?” Macy said whining just a little. “Look, the potion doesn’t work unless there’s already a real attraction present. So no one would ever be forced to have sex with someone they didn’t want.”

Naomi’s head snapped up at that, and she felt almost sick. “What?”

“It doesn’t work unless both parties already want each other,” Macy repeated, looking up at them both for the first time. “Which means no one would know they were dosed if some creep slipped something in their drink because they’d not feel any effects. That’s why I didn’t come find Zita at first. I just thought- but then you canceled class, professor, so I knew I had to help.”

Naomi rested her face in her hands, mortified. She didn’t like having her personal feelings – ones she didn’t even really know existed on that deep a level – broadcasted to the object of her affections and the person who’d gotten them in this mess in the first place.

“Macy,” Zita finally said, and she didn’t look at Naomi even once. “It does not matter whether or not Naomi and I are attracted to each other.  Your potion still took away our freedom of choice. It stripped us of control of our own bodies, and forced us together in a way neither of us ever wanted. Just because people are attracted to each other and might desire each other does not mean they will pursue it. I mean, god, there are a hundred reasons I couldn’t have ever acted on my feelings. She’s my direct superior; we have an unhealthy power dynamic between us. I’d never- I didn’t want-” She exhaled heavily, pacing the room.

The ill feeling curling in Naomi’s stomach only strengthened at Zita’s distress. She felt dirty. Like some disgusting old wench who’d taken advantage of some poor powerless TA for her own gain. She didn’t look at either of the others. It was all well and good for Zita to find her attractive. She’d never begrudged students having crushes on their teachers before. It was harmless fun. But teachers reciprocating those feelings always struck her as unforgivable. They were so young, for god’s sake.

Zita’s words, her aching guilt, had their desired effects. Macy’s lip wobbled. She looked horrified at herself. Not as horrified at Naomi, of course, but still.

“Just- just make sure you never do something like this again,” Naomi said tiredly. It had been a long few days. “I want a full research paper on the negative impacts of “love” potions by next week. You will be graded, and it will count towards your GPA, and you’d better be thankful I haven’t chosen to report this to the school. Zita may not give you the same curtesy.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m so sorry, really,” Macy said imploringly. And when Zita nodded, she left in a hurry. Alone at last, Naomi and Zita sat across from each other at the table, unsure what to say.

“There’s nothing wrong with finding someone younger attractive,” Zita said at last. “You’re not perverted, Naomi. I mean, not in this case scenario at any rate. Had it been one of the actual students, I’d feel differently, but I’m thirty-four. I’m not a child, and I’m not- there’s only three weeks left in the semester.”

“You said yourself you would have never done this without that fucking potion,” Naomi said despairingly. “And we both know we ended up having sex for longer than strictly necessary. I should have- god, I’m responsible for you even if you’re not my student exactly. I shouldn’t have let my own desire take over like that. It wasn’t the potion; it was my own weakness. I’m so sorry, Zita. I should never have taken advantage of you like that.”

“Then I shouldn’t have either,” Zita said somberly. “I wasn’t thinking clearly, but that’s no excuse. I shouldn’t have let my own longing cloud my judgment. We both also know you were more affected than I was. I could have stopped us, but I didn’t. But, Naomi, just because I would never have acted on my feelings while I was your TA, that doesn’t mean I didn’t imagine what could happen after all the time.”

Naomi looked up, catching Zita’s soft gaze for the first time. She weakly smiled, and gently took Zita’s hand in hers.

The next week Naomi lectured for the entire class about the dangers of non-consensually dosing someone with anything. Drugs, potions, spells. Anything. She spent half an hour on aphrodisiacs, speaking so cringingly in detail that most of the class couldn’t even look at her, least of all Macy. The ten-page essay Macy wrote got top marks, and as far as Naomi knew not a single student caught on to the specifics of what she and Zita had gone through.

Two weeks after that the semester ended, and Zita officially made it through her defense of her dissertation. To celebrate her newly minted doctor title, Naomi took her out for a romantic candlelit dinner and they shared their first real kiss under the moonlight. It was the first of many more to come.


End file.
